First Rights
By Nishi Chawla
The land does not speak in words
But in the language of ash and sap,
Its vowels the curve of an elk’s antler,
Its consonants the hum of stones
Worn smooth by countless knees.
A birch tree remembers
Hands tracing its bark
A lover memorizing skin
Not to own,
But to learn what it means to belong.
The rivers do not flow;
They bleed,
Their paths dark sutures
Binding the earth’s tender wounds,
Each ripple a gasp,
Each current a whisper,
We were here before thirst was named.
Mountains do not rise;
They coil inward,
Their spines arching in silent defiance,
Hoarding the sky for those
Who knew its weight in stars
Before it was traded for wires.
What is a boundary
To the wind that knows
The salt of every ocean,
The musk of every pine?
It slips through fence posts,
Gathers the embers of crushed sage,
And carries it like a hymn.
First rights are not seen;
They are the shadow
Cast by a flame long extinguished,
The smell of cedar smoke
Lingering in a hollowed-out cave
Where echoes refuse to fade.
Dr Nishi Chawla is an academic, a writer and a filmmaker. Nishi Chawla has published ten plays, two novels, and seven collections of poetry. She has also written and directed four award winning art house feature films. She is the third Indian poet ever to be invited for a reading and a discussion of the US Library of Congress organized, 'The Poet and the Poem' program.